northerly july-august 2016

northerly By ron Writers Festival Magazine

July-August 2016

· FESTIVAL EDITION · SARAH ARMSTRONG · LUKE CARMAN · HUGO RACE · SARAH HOLLAND-BATT TARA JUNE WINCH · NEWS & REVIEWS · FESTIVAL WORKSHOPS · COMPETITIONS

Join us in Sanur, Bali for Writing in Paradise

4 28 July–3 August 4

Shelley Kenigsberg & David Leser present a

writing retreat for seasoned writers or those new to it.

In the sublime setting of Villa Sekala, in Sanur, you’ll:

• learn about the power and discipline of writing daily • learn how to tap into your imagination to create memorable and captivating passages of writing

• benefit from support, guidance and feedback from two highly-trained writing mentors and editors

• enjoy the support of a small group of fellow writers • discover what Hemingway meant when he said the hardest thing about the writing endeavour is ‘getting the words right’.

Past participants said: … “life-changing”. In one

hot, intensive week, I discovered what my real writing strengths and weaknesses were — things clicked into place, and I worked harder and with more focus than I have in a very long time. Inspiring.— Stephanie Goldberg, UK

Cost $1890 (AUD) Included All workshop materials, meals, accommodation (single room), internal transfers.

Does not include airfares. Early bird: $1770 ends 15 May.

Shelley is a distinguished freelance editor, writer and trainer in trade and educational publishing.

Shelley has commissioned new titles, mentored authors privately and via the Australian Society of Authors, and edited for Australia’s most respected publishers. She has been Head of Macleay College Book Editing course for 25 years. She presents long and short courses in editing and writing at literary festivals, and writers’ centres in Australia, Indonesia and Singapore.

David is an award-winning journalist and author

whose recent memoir To Begin to Know: Walking in the Shadows of My Father was shortlisted for 2015’s Australian National Biography Award. He has been senior feature writer for The Australian Magazine, The Bulletin, HQ, Good Weekend, the Australian Women’s Weekly, as well as a Middle East, European and North American correspondent. David works as a public interviewer, mentor, guest lecturer and speechwriter.

Email: info@editinginparadise for all details and booking form.

“Don’t change a thing. Thanks so much for a wonderful week. What a journey!“— Fabian Winiger, Oxford

CONTENTS

>> THIS ISSUE

JULAUG2016 002 Director’s note 003 News

6

006 StoryBoard publishing launch

The authors of tomorrow find their voice with Byron Writers Festival’s schools initiative

008 Sweet carnage

Novelist Tara June Winch on early success, viewing Australia from afar and learning from Wole Soyinka

009 Poem

8

‘Thalassography’ by Sarah Holland-Batt

010 Research in motion

As her third novel Promise is published, Sarah Armstrong guides us through the fine art of conducting research for fiction

012 How the west was won

10

In conversation with Luke Carman about the literary landscape of Western Sydney

014 Sound travels

Hugo Race interviewed about his genre-straddling memoir, Road Series

016 SCU showcase

Poetry from Meghan Hunter

12

017 Arts round-up

A journey through clocks and a history of Istanbul feature at the next ADFAS lectures

018 Ideas boom

Jeni Caffin takes the reins for a new initiative from NORPA

019 Book review

14

Carly Lorente on Wild by Nature by Sarah Marquis

020 Festival workshops 022 Competitions 024 Writers’ groups

18 northerly | 001

>>HELLO

Director’s Note

Photo: Angela Kay

There is something especially gratifying when the last ‘i and t’ is dotted and crossed on the annual Byron Writers Festival program, and it heads off to the printer – thirtytwo session-packed pages that I hope will thrill, delight, champion and challenge ideas, ignite passions and debate, and broaden our community conversations.

This twentieth anniversary year will be celebrated with such luminary international writers as America’s P.J. O’Rourke, William Finnegan, Cheryl Strayed, Jeffery Renard Allen and Angela Flournoy.

They will be joined by muchloved Australian writers Robert Dessaix, Anna Funder, Helen Garner, Tom Keneally, Drusilla Modjeska and Magda Szubanski – to name but a few.

Post-election politics and the important issues facing Australians will be hot topics of debate with Bob Brown, Tony Windsor, Tim Fischer and John Faulkner all taking part along with leading Australian commentators Kerry O’Brien, Sarah Ferguson, Anne Summers, Julia Baird and Ross Coulthart.

Significantly, reconciliation and race will be centre stage when Stan Grant delivers the annual Thea Astley Festival Address.

Byron Writers Festival is renowned for its sense of community and is treasured by those who attend. Its power lies in the evocative expression of real and imagined stories that strike chords and captivate because they are authentic, and told by exceptional thinkers, writers and communicators. We look forward to welcoming more than 150 exceptionally talented voices in 2016.

This July-August issue of northerly offers a small taste of what’s to come at this year’s event. Please enjoy illuminating interviews with authors Luke Carman, Sarah Armstrong, Hugo Race and Tara June Winch; a poem from Sarah Holland-Batt and a front cover painting by one of the nation’s cultural treasures, Michael Leunig.

The Festival also heralds our annual series of Writing Workshops (August 1-4), again this year offering a smorgasbord for existing and aspiring writers.

Details on page twenty of this magazine or at byronwritersfestival.com Northern Rivers region members are especially alerted to the rollicking Five Writers Road Trip journeying to Coffs Harbour, Mullumbimby, Ballina, Lennox Head and Murwillumbah, when Zacharey Jane and her crew will talk writing and reading for five merry days.

The anticipation in the Byron Writers Festival office is building daily for what portends to be an amazing August celebration of our twentieth anniversary.

You are warmly invited to share many stimulating, memorable and nurturing moments with us at Australia’s largest regional writers’ festival.

northerly northerly is the bi-monthly magazine of Byron Writers Festival. Byron Writers Festival offer a year-round program of readings, workshops and writer visits as well as the annual production of Byron Writers Festival. Byron Writers Festival is a non-profit, incorporated organisation receiving its core funding from Arts NSW. LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: www.byronwritersfestival.com POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846 Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com CONTRIBUTORS: Sarah Holland-Batt, Jeni Caffin, Angela Kay, Meghan Hunter, Carly Lorente, Michael Leunig BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON Chris Hanley VICE CHAIRPERSON Jennifer St George SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Kate Cameron, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight, Adam van Kempen LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in JANUARY, MARCH, MAY, JULY, SEPTEMBER and NOVEMBER MAGAZINE DESIGN Kaboo Media PRINTER Quality Plus Printers Ballina ADVERTISING We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior.

Email northerlyeditor@gmail.com DISCLAIMER The Byron Writers Festival presents northerly in good faith and accepts no responsibility for any misinformation or problems arising from any misinformation. The views expressed by contributors and advertisers are not necessarily the views of the management committee or staff. We reserve the right to edit articles with regard to length. Copyright of the contributed articles is maintained by the named author and northerly.

CONNECT WITH US Visit www.byronwritersfestival.com. Sign up for a membership. Stay updated and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. http://www.facebook.com/ byronwritersfestival https://twitter.com/bbwritersfest

Cover art: Each Other by Michael Leunig (www.leunig.com.au)

Byron Writers Festival and northerly magazine acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional custodians of this land.

Edwina Johnson Director, Byron Writers Festival

002 | northerly

>> NEWS

News Funding success for Elders Book Project

The Elders Book Project, a campaign to publish a book celebrating the lives of much-loved local Elders, has successfully reached its funding goal via Pozible.

The Elders have titled the book Our Way Stories, with local Indigenous figure Dale Roberts working with some of the region’s most respected Elders over a twoyear period to ensure stories were recorded before they are lost.

No fewer than 130 people pledged to the Pozible campaign, with Elders Real Estate Lennox Head and Elders Real Estate Bangalow pushing the project over the line by becoming Platinum supporters. The book will now be launched as part of Byron Writers Festival 2016.

Call-out for queer zine

A Northern Rivers zine is seeking contributions for a publication designed to further community discussion of ‘ideas of queer’. Organised by a collaboration of locals, the project will explore reactions and reflections on queer identities and inclusivity. A wide range of forms and mediums are welcome, including academic pieces, personal stories and experimental writing along with photos, illustrations, comic strips, mind maps and more. Submissions can be on any aspect of ‘queer’ and contributions can be claimed, anonymous or under an alias. Send submissions to ideasofqueer@snakebite.com by July 31.

Volunteer thanks

The Board and staff at Byron Writers Festival would like to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to its team of volunteers, who support the Festival by giving their time and positive energy. Thank you to Barbara Barrett, Karen Beaumont, Penny Beaumont, Rhian Bosco, Jann Burmester, Madeleine Doherty, Sam Fishburn, Monique Hartman, Liz McCall, Victor Marsh, Ralph Moore, Shirley Nelson, Joanna Palser, Nan Pulsford, Anne Shepperson, Sharron Short, Kate Steele, Melody Valentine and Kate Westberg.

Notes from the underground

David Mitchell is taking the idea of a print embargo to new lengths, quite literally. The manuscript for his latest novel From Me Flows What You Call Time has been buried until 2114 in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest. Mitchell, of Cloud Atlas fame, is the second contributor (after Margaret Atwood) to a remarkable project by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, entitled Future Library, which began in 2014. The idea is that each year for a hundred years, an author provides a literary work that will not be unearthed until 2114. In the Nordmarka forest, one thousand trees were planted two years ago, which will be chopped down after the hundred-year period in order to make the paper upon which all the buried texts will be printed.

northerly | 003

>> NEWS

‘It’s a little glimmer of hope in a season of highly depressing news cycles, that affirms we are in with a chance of civilisation in one hundred years,’ said Mitchell. ‘Everything is telling us that we’re doomed, but the Future Library is a candidate on the ballot paper for possible futures.’

Susie Warrick Award open for entries

Young writers have a small window left to submit to the Susie Warrick Young Writers Award 2016, with submissions closing on July 5. The competition is open to local writers aged between thirteen and twenty-one in the Northern Rivers area (from Tweed Heads in the north, to Taree in the south, and west to Kyogle), for short stories of no more than 1,000 words. First prize includes $1,250 towards skills and career development, a one-day Byron Writers Festival pass, inclusion in the Festival program and publication in northerly. For further entry details go to byronwritersfestival.com – winners are announced on July 12.

Call for submissions for charitable book project

Submissions are invited for a forthcoming book that is designed to bring ‘stories and much-needed wisdom to kids who have no one’. 1000 Ripple Effects is due for publication in November 2018. More information about this collaborative, internationally focused project, including specifications and fees, can be found at www.1000rippleeffects.com

Local awarded Ray Koppe residency

Congratulations to Byron Bay author Nick Couldwell, who was recently named the Ray Koppe Young Writers’ Residency Winner 2016 for his novel Calluses. The program offers an unpublished writer under thirty years of age the opportunity of a week’s stay at Varuna, The Writers’ House in Katoomba, NSW. Couldwell will also appear at Byron Writers Festival 2016.

OBITUARIES BALÁZS BIRTALAN Hungarian author; October 12, 1969 – May 14, 2016-06-03 LOIS DUNCAN American author; April 28, 1934 – June 15, 2016 NICHOLAS FISK British children’s author; October 14, 1923 – May 10, 2016 JAVARE GOWDA Indian author; July 6, 1915 – May 30, 2015 MICHAEL S. HARPER American poet; March 18, 1938 – May 7, 2016 VERA HENRIKSEN Norwegian novelist and playwright; March 22, 1927 – May 23, 2016 YANG JIANG Chinese playwright and author; July 17, 1911 – May 25, 2016 MARITA LINDQUIST Finnish children’s author; November 10, 1918 – June 7, 2016 GILLIAN MEARS Australian short story writer and novelist; July 21, 1964 – May 16, 2016 SIR PETER SHAFFER British playwright and screenwriter; May 15, 1926 – June 6, 2016 WILLIAM WRIGHT American author; October 22, 1930 – June 4, 2016

QUOTAT ION CORNER “At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it.”

— Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask (1949) 004 | northerly

>> NEWS

northerly | 005

>>STORYBOARD

006 | northerly

Byron Writers Festival brings StoryBoard to regional schools

>>STORYBOARD

One of Byron Writers Festival’s key new local initiatives kicked off in style recently with Tristan Bancks wowing children at The Pocket Public School for StoryBoard’s official launch. There is now plenty more to come from a program that aims to engage and enthral schoolchildren through storytelling and creativity.

Giant haunted mazes, mysterious broken fingers, and evil older sisters were just some of the ideas and stories that the children from The Pocket Public School created with much-loved children’s author Tristan Bancks when Storyboard launched as Byron Writers Festival’s new creative writing program in late May. StoryBoard will bring leading authors and illustrators into local schools throughout the year for fun and engaging writing workshops with the aim of inspiring young people, fostering creativity and imagination, and helping increase literacy.

As well as multiaward winning children’s author Bancks, authors Kate Forsyth and Samantha Turnbull have come on board as Storytellers-inChief to take part in the program. Byron Writers Festival has employed a dedicated StoryBoard project officer, Coralie Tapper, to launch the project and run the pilot.

‘Our very first StoryBoard adventure to The Pocket Public School was incredibly inspiring and fun,’ said Tapper. ‘It was a day full of creativity, writing, proofing, editing, re-writing and sharing. Tristan encouraged them to let their imaginations run wild and gave them the tools they needed to create stories. The students responded with such enthusiasm and their confidence grew throughout the day as they watched their stories come to life. It was wonderful to witness this next generation of writers and readers.’

Storyboard is a result-based learning experience. The student stories will be typed up and shared amongst a range of potential publishing platforms. The students were presented with a unique StoryBoard notebook to write up their final copy, and a Polaroid picture was taken (silly faces encouraged) for their ‘About the Author’ page.

‘Tristan’s visit and the workshops have been so much

fun. I am grateful for all the helpful tools he has given us to improve our writing and creating stories. My favourite part of Storyboard was taking memories from my own life and then using my imagination to make it a little bit more weird and fun,’ said Ruby, Year 5/6.

‘StoryBoard has been an invaluable experience for The Pocket Public School,’ said teacher and librarian Abelia Hissink ‘Before the writing workshops began our students were bursting with ideas and StoryBoard gave them a sense of direction and opportunity to express themselves as writers. Tristan Bancks showed our students techniques that transformed their ideas into cohesive stories with substance and meaning. Students will be drawing on the experience of StoryBoard each time they pick up a pen to write.’

In its pilot year StoryBoard will be visiting 20-25 regional schools within an eightykilometre radius of Byron Bay, accessing students of diverse backgrounds and abilities and offering a range of creative workshops and other youth opportunities. In 2017, Byron Writers Festival aims to expand to many more regional schools and access 3,000 kids per year.

Jackie French, Australian Children Laureate 20142015 said, ‘This extraordinary project will give stories, and the power of stories, back to the children who most need them. It may make them better readers; encourage them to find ambitions and further education; imagine what they and Australia may become and give them tools to get there. But, before all that, it will give them joy and confidence. Never underestimate the power of story.’

For those interested in finding out more about the StoryBoard program please contact Byron Writers Festival on (02) 6685 5115 or coralie@ byronwritersfestival.com northerly | 007

A deep earth scent: Tara June Winch’s worldly view The multi-award winning debut novel from Wollongongborn Tara June Winch, Swallow The Air, marked this partIndigenous author as something of a literary sensation when it appeared in 2006. Ten years on, Winch, who is now based in France, is about to publish a new collection of short stories, After The Carnage. Her second novel is also imminent, she says, as she gears up for an appearance back on home turf at Byron Writers Festival 2016.

It’s now ten years since your acclaimed first book, Swallow The Air. Looking back now, was it ever overwhelming to be the subject of such attention at such a young age?

It was, I was newly twenty-two and had a baby at the same time also so the first few years were a little overwhelming. Overall though I can’t complain, it gave me a career and direction. Writing as vocation is not particularly a field where external pressure abounds, the pressure one puts on one’s self is when it becomes difficult, an imagined pressure to hurry up and write the next thing. When I stopped writing in my notebooks ‘must publish new book by twenty-four, and then by twenty-eight, or thirty or whatever’, when I stopped viewing myself as a writer attached to my age, I was free again. That was a huge shift for me creatively, just to stop thinking I had to prove myself.

Can you identify a few key ways your writing has changed since then?

It’s hard to self-critique, but I think this book [After The Carnage] is less lyrical, more barebones. I was reading a lot of James Salter and Raymond Carver. I don’t think they are a particular combination; but there is a masculine feel to my writing in After the Carnage I think, I hope. My upcoming novel is different again, it’s lyrical and contemplative without being sentimental, I’m excited about After The Carnage, but I’m kind of thrilled about the new novel.

How has living in France affected how you view and write about Australia?

Australia is always home really. We’ll be splitting our time between France and Australia more and more I think.

Writing about elsewhere, or writing from elsewhere, has a nostalgic effect. I have this real romanticism of certain turns of phrase from Australia, and of course, especially in terms of writing about nature and the environment, the soundtrack of the bush, the erratic constant bird song, the deep earth scent and vividness, it’s there in my mind and I try to drench it up. It’s a little like digging your mind and throwing all the earth in a sifter; the things one remembers, the things that are truly evocative, they’ll be there – a small pebble or hunk of rock, the rest falls away naturally. So I think the memory, what gets 008 | northerly

gathered in this outsider version of Australia, is these big fat clichés and in the right context, in a good piece of writing, I think it works.

You enjoyed a period of mentorship with Wole Soyinka a few years ago. What are some of the most important ways he influenced your work?

His greatest influence on my writing was his advising that I tread carefully in what I want versus what I can write about, to focus on the characters rather than the sociological condition. That’s been so important to remember. We also spent a significant amount of time, over a year, just ‘in conversation’; speaking about life with someone with a world-class mind, it is extraordinary, I learnt a lot, less than the mechanics of writing.

Can you identify any themes that are consistent throughout the stories in After The Carnage, and over what time period does the writing of them span?

These stories have been written over the last decade, the theme is really about that ocean of suffering, around us or within us, it’s about distances and those great and small forces that pull us which ways. I hope it’s a collection for everyone really, hopefully a passage or a story for most peoples’ taste.

Do you feel any obligation as a writer to offer at least some level of political engagement in your fiction?

My obligation, as I mentioned, is not to. I’ve learnt that.

My obligation is to tell a story, and whether there are political elements that surface for the reader, than that is for them. Although having said that, the new novel is very political, it’s a distinctly Australian story in our current climate, so it’s hard not to write about the lives of people in such a tumultuous time in history without it being political.

Finally, when might we see your next novel published?

Very soon! It’s going to be a sneaky arrival I think – but if you want a teaser they’ll be something in the next edition of Westerly. BS Tare June Winch will appear at the sessions Reading Australia: Telling Our Own Stories (24), Short Forms: Novellas and Short Stories (35) and Indigenous Lives Through Women’s Lives (44) at Byron Writers Festival 2016, August 5-7.

>> POEM

Thalassography Sarah Holland-Batt

I have known these estuaries— the channels and canals, the backwaters that flush and eddy to the Pacific, I have skimmed that muddied slurry, felt the nip in the throat where the salt in the air is the salt of the coast, I have tacked where the tide is incomplete: no rollers and breakers, only an ebb that rocks the wayfarers— a rush of silver, the gavel-smack of mullet in the night, mud-crabs elbowing denwards under concrete slabs of boatramps— I have stalked where herons stilt and spear baitfish in green afternoons, cast crabpots in loose analemmas to watch the black sonar spread, tracked prawn trawlers on the broadwater crawling back in the lavender dawn, then sat at the jetty’s edge and shucked those tiger shells, cast sucked heads back into the dark, crushed mussel shell underfoot for the burn of sharpened chitin, stepped where stingrays wallow and idle, shuffling their barbs, waiting to strike.

I have spent half my life in low tide— nights where I have not known if I am contracting or dragging out again, where the movement of the water is the movement of my mind— unending comings and goings of sounds and narrows, those entry points to my two continents—and my history is the history of currents: a canal small enough to catch a childhood in its net, water vast enough to divide a life.

Sarah Holland-Batt is an award-winning poet, editor and critic. Her most recent collection is The Hazards. Sarah will appear at sessions Poetry Readings (8), The Lure of Elsewhere (57) and Rome (114) at Byron Writers Festival 2016, August 5-7.

northerly | 009

>> INTERVIEW

Facing the facts

The idea of ‘research’ for fiction will of course mean different things to different people, depending on style, genre and inclination. For Sarah Armstrong with her new novel Promise, it meant study, a series of interviews and meticulous fact-checking in order to lend authenticity to a book that depicts the work of a number of social institutions. in order for it to be credible I had to do a bit of research, although I’m really fascinated by all things medical so I drew on some of my own fascination of how the body works and gave that to the doctor. I interviewed a local doctor, a general physician. I spent several hours with him and followed up with email questions, and that was the main thrust of the research.

For Promise I had to talk to people in child protection, law and police – all areas really foreign to me. I’ve never set foot in a courtroom in my life, even when I was a journalist. I was a little bit humbled and embarrassed by that, so I went and sat in various court cases in Lismore and interviewed former police and current police and people in child protection.

‘There were times when I was writing it and crying because I put my own daughter in the shoes of the little girl,’ says Mullumbimby’s Sarah Armstrong of the emotional toll of writing Promise, her third novel.

The book explores how a Sydney woman, Anna, reacts when she suspects the five-year-old girl next door is being abused, and asks uncomfortable, challenging and essential questions about our responsibilities for the children around us.

It was a book that saw former journalist Armstrong conducting more vigorous and comprehensive research than for her previous novels, His Other House and Salt Rain, as she set about ensuring that scenes involving healthcare, legal procedures, child protection institutions and more were as accurate as possible. Here, she talks to northerly about how she approached the potentially daunting task of conducting research for writing fiction, and offers some guidance for less experienced writers.

How did the research you undertook for Promise compare to that you did for His Other House and Salt Rain?

I did more research for this novel than either of the other two. For Salt Rain the only research I recall doing was interviewing local dairy farmers. I lived in the place I set it and it was very internal, an emotional drama I guess, where I only had to look at myself.

His Other House had a doctor as the protagonist, and 010 | northerly

How did the idea for Promise first arise?

I saw a television report a about a little boy whose mother was charged with his murder. The report described how various neighbours had reported him to community services because they were afraid for his wellbeing. Then I read an article about how the case workers with community services received those reports, but they could only visit a certain number of children that week and they had to figure out who was the most at risk. He wasn’t on that list and he died.

I put myself in the shoes of the neighbours and wondered how they’d feel. It was a situation which interests me and which touches on a subject that’s close to my heart. Since becoming a mother, my awareness of the vulnerability of children has been really heightened.

What are the dangers of not conducting comprehensive research for a book like Promise?

When I’m reading fiction, although I know it’s an imaginary world, I expect it to be credible. I read a novel, which I won’t name, which had a whole section about IVF, which I know a lot about, and this writer got a couple of facts really wrong. You want to enter a novel’s universe and believe it’s true, and when those facts were wrong, it shattered my belief in the writer and the story. And I don’t want that to happen when people are reading my books insofar as its possible. I want them to read it and believe it’s true. And I’m a journalist and I like to be accurate.

I write realism, I don’t write magic realism or fantasy, so that’s why research is so important for me.

What were the skills from journalism that you found yourself employing for research for Promise?

One of the big things I learnt when I was a journalist was how to listen to answers. When I first started out I’d be always thinking about my next question while someone was answering the previous question, and I wasn’t listening to what they were saying. What I learnt was to listen to the answer, because so often there needs to be a follow-up question.

I think I learnt to ask concise questions and open

>> INTERVIEW

questions, not closed questions, and probably just a confidence in my right to ask people questions.

down. It was a bit tragic losing that hospital scene, I don’t want to do that too often.

What was the process of identifying whom you needed to talk to for Promise?

It was almost always through friends of friends. I have friends who, say, work in health, and I would ask them ‘Can I talk to you about this issue?’ and then they might refer me to someone else. That was the way I found people, and that’s good because there are always different perspectives. I didn’t have to approach people by cold calling them.

The timing is significant too – I actually write quite a lot from my own imagining of how something would happen, and then I research. There are pluses and pitfalls to doing it that way. For example, I wrote a whole scene in a hospital and did a lot of research to get it accurate, but a few people said I was stretching it a bit, and finally the doctor I spoke to said, ‘I think you’re pushing it to say this happened’. So I ditched about 7,000 words of a beautifully written hospital scene.

It would have been good if I’d started that research a little earlier to avoid wasting so many hours writing.

But I wasn’t that upset: most important to me is that it’s accurate. That was an example of research getting in the way of my ‘poetic imagination’.

How do you feel about the old maxim ‘write what you know’?

I write about people’s human responses to situations.

I’m not exploring institutions. I already knew the emotional trajectory of the story, which was for me the main thing; the rest was about making sure it was plausible. This book became quite personal for me because I was asking myself what my responsibility was for the children around me – since I’ve had my own child I have been asking myself that. Writing it was my own personal investigation and inquiry into that, and I’ve come to my own position I guess, and I’m much clearer on what I would do if I was concerned about a child in a situation. I just always write about questions that interest me.

When you approached organisations or people you didn’t know for facts and guidance, how did you describe the project you were working on to them when you introduced yourself?

I tend say I’m a writer, or I write fiction, and Pan MacMillan are publishing my novel – it lets them know it’s going to be published so they take you seriously. The first person I spoke to at NSW police was breathtakingly unhelpful. Then I rang back and got on to someone else, who was unbelievably helpful. There was no difference in the way I approached these people, so sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw.

If it’s a little general inquiry, and it’s in their interests to get it right, they will respond.

How much do you enjoy research and how long did the process take?

The research occurs in dribs and drabs while I’m writing, it’s a bit hard to quantify it. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed stepping back into that journalistic role, but the thing I enjoyed most was meeting people I wouldn’t normally meet, and having permission to ask them questions about something of deep interest to me.

It comes together when I write something from that research, that’s when it has real meaning and is really satisfying. BS Sarah Armstrong will appear on the sessions Violence Against Women (13) and Women of Fiction (54) at Byron Writers Festival 2016, August 5-7.

If there a budding novelist who didn’t have your publishing history, do you think it would be difficult for them to approach people on a ‘cold’ basis for the type of research you carried out? Can you offer any advice for someone writing a novel for the first time and needs input from sources like police or health and legal professionals?

I think the best thing is to do as much research as you can on your own first. So use the internet, find articles written on the topic, relevant academic publications, and that can also lead you to the right person. Someone quoted in a newspaper article or who wrote a paper could end up being your source.

Show them that you’ve done them the respect of doing your own groundwork first, that you’re not expecting them to tell you the most basic information about the topic. But if they’ve got the time people like to talk about their passion and what they do.

So you write a first draft before you embark on the research?

So you know what questions you need answered, yes.

My first drafts are incredibly rough, I don’t waste time picking the right word or making the sentences smooth and flow at that point. I’m just getting the rough plot northerly | 011

>> INTERVIEW

Western civilisation: Luke Carman and Sydney’s newest literary enclave

With his debut collection of short stories, An Elegant Young Man, Liverpool-born Luke Carman has been received as one of a number of young authors forging a new literary identity for that most colourful and culturally exciting of communities, Western Sydney.

Carman’s book is a remarkable attempt at translating the rhythms and nuances of this region to the page, whilst also pointing to international and historyspanning influences. Furthermore, Carman has been heavily involved with Sweatshop, a collective based at the University of Western Sydney designed to foster literature in the area through workshops, writing programs and performances.

Carman also found himself in the middle of what we might accurately term a ‘literary shitstorm’ earlier this year (although going by what he says below, he was oblivious to much of it). His essay in Meanjin, ‘Getting Square in A Jerking Circle’, was an impassioned, dramatic critique of the Australian literature and arts community that drew vitriol from many quarters and thankful praise from others. You can make up your own mind by visiting: https://meanjin.com.au/essays/getting-squarein-a-jerking-circle/ Ahead of his appearance at Byron Writers Festival, Carman spoke to northerly about his writing, the Meanjin saga and more. Interview by Barnaby Smith.

You are identified as one of several writers credited with creating a new literary identity for Western Sydney. But for you, what works defined Western Sydney prior to this renaissance of recent years?

The back cover blurb of An Elegant Young Man makes the claim that Western Sydney has no literary tradition.

There have been quite a few challenges to that claim by critics – but I’m yet to be convinced it’s untrue. Lachlan Brown’s Limited Cities and Fiona Wright’s Knuckled were earlier works than my own, but they’re both poetry collections – so obviously they don’t count. People have pointed to examples like White’s suburban work in The Solid Mandala, and so on, as an antecedent, but that’s a loose fit. White’s imaginative claim on the Western Suburbs is irreconcilable with my own – and with any of the Giramondo publications to come out of the region.

Jennifer Maiden has a strong claim on the area – as both novelist and poet – but again I see her territory as a separate one to the Greater Western Sydney lot of the last few years. Maiden’s essay ‘The Problem of Suburban 012 | northerly

Evil’, however, still reigns supreme as an interrogation of a poetics of Western Sydney. Maiden distils the core of the region’s poetics when she writes ‘Nowhere else can the essential, eternal and eternally reversing dialectic between icon and iconoclasm be observed and experienced so well’.

At what point in your life, and in response to what experiences or reading, did you first realise Western Sydney offered such rich literary possibilities?

This is a fine question – but my answer to it has become so canned that it has become impossible for me to repeat it again here. In fact, my answer to this question turned into a collaboration between the astounding Melbourne artist Sam Wallman, and the SBS Online team led by Kylie Boltin earlier this year, and readers who have some perverse need to know my Eureka moment can treat themselves to it there. [Link: http://www.sbs.com.au/ programs/feature/liverpool-boys] How did Western Sydney’s communities respond to An Elegant Young Man? Do you feel you reached a multicultural audience, and one beyond the literary classes?

Sydney’s western suburbia is such a densely populated and diverse place that it would be impossible to know what its many communities thought of my little square book. I can say that younger Western Sydney writers like Stephen Pham, Shirley Le and Nitin Vengurlekar have been very vocal in their praise – and that means a lot.

Although, as you suggest, there have also been responses from readers outside the bounds of the literary classes.

The book was very consciously written for two distinct readers: people who love literature and those who couldn’t care less about books. Many people who have been gracious enough to let me know they enjoyed the collection have emphasised that they don’t otherwise read fiction at all. It’s a marker of success to be gathering converts – however few and fleeting.

Was it a priority to balance the alienation and marginalisation depicted in An Elegant Young Man with certain elements of humour that run through the book?

I’ve heard it said that ‘true joy is a serious thing’, but you can’t prove it by me. I am grim and gormless unless in laughter. An Elegant Young Man is a little book loaded with a great many jokes, without which, as in life, it would be very hard to get through.

>> INTERVIEW

What Australian authors do you count as a significant influence?

The conversational subtleties of Henry Lawson, the sheer imaginative strangeness of J. S. Harry’s Peter Henry Lepus Poems, the apocalyptic giddiness of Lachlan Brown, the baroque humour and lyrical exuberance of Patrick White, the tectonic potency of Alexis Wright’s novels: these are the Australian influences that first come to mind, though there are many more.

Has the fevered response to your well-documented Meanjin essay thickened your skin? Did any of it affect you?

Not having a Twitter account, I was largely immune to the wrath of the Melbourne scenesters and their assorted allies. A few responses were impossible to avoid – especially since friends with social media often insisted on sharing the bad vibes with me – but the attacks and critiques were nicely counterbalanced by the overwhelming support I received. Most of the correspondence was from writers who related to the tone of the essay, but much of it came from arts administrators too – though you wouldn’t think such a thing possible based on the complaints of my critics, who tried to make out that I had a grudge against virtually anyone who actually ‘works’ in the arts.

Overall, despite the numerical advantage of my enemies, I don’t think there was much skin lost. In fact, perhaps the truly saddening revelation for me was not that the lit-mob types can’t take it when someone calls them out – surely not news to anyone – it’s that they can’t dish it out either.

Then again, maybe I missed the best of it.

Were you surprised by the response and ever tempted to engage in the debate?

To expect mainstream rags to send photographers to your home on account of an essay on literary culture published in a literary journal would be a dangerous delusion for any essayist to entertain. And yet, there it was in living colour – a full-page photograph of the author under the headline ‘Frauds poisoning our literary culture’ or whatever it was [‘Incorrigible frauds poisoning Australia’s literary scene’ was an article published by The Australian on March 18].

The response to the article by our literary leaders more resembled a pit of rats than a debate. Apparently serious critics were incensed by an essay they claimed to be

unable to read – and their critiques often demonstrated that this sudden illiteracy was genuine. When someone from Melbourne – whose name I’ve gratefully forgotten – wrote a fervid response claiming that I was ‘pissing on the heads of women and the mentally ill’, I came very close to degrading myself by joining the ugly fray. Since the essay is explicitly written as a defence of the writer – who is by nature often mentally unwell – it is difficult to imagine a stupider, more backward take on my argument.

Nevertheless, I have taken to referring to myself in bios as the ‘writer with the indefatigable bladder’ on behalf of one Melbournite’s inane slander.

I admire your apparent lack of social media presence. Is Twitter and Facebook have a stifling, negative effect on public literary debate?

Any doubts I might have had about living a social media light lifestyle were snuffed out by the firestorm response to the Meanjin essay. I don’t dare Google my name for fear of what might be lurking out there in the Twittersphere. Facebook and Instagram might do wonders for some writers, but I was born in the previous century – a time before the great and powerful Zuckerbergs – and much to the disgust of my critics I intend to die there.

What does the future of Sweatshop entail?

Sweatshop has a wonderful future ahead of it.

Unfortunately – because I didn’t show up to work for three months – the decision was made by Sweatshop’s central command to encounter that future without me. The director, Mohammed Ahmad, has just secured funding for a number of extremely exciting projects – including the writing of his own new novel. Peter Polites has his first book coming out soon – which will be a much needed shock to the literary scene. No writer was ever better built for a following than Mr. Polites. The poet Maryam Azam and the fiction writers Stephan Pham, Shirley Le, Jason Gray and Nitin Vengurlekar are the future of Sweatshop, and as such, Australian fiction in general.

Finally, what are you working on at the moment?

At the moment, as always, I have no idea what I’m doing.

Luke Carman will appear at the sessions The State of our Cultural Conversation (14) and Five Writers, Five Towns, Five Days (81) at Byron Writers Festival 2016, August 5-7.

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>> INTERVIEW

Songs of experience: Hugo Race’s long, winding road Though best known as a musician for his dozens of albums and for being a founding member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Hugo Race earlier this year proved himself a genuine literary talent with the publication of Road Series, which can reasonably be described as one of the most innovative, ambitious and passionate music memoirs Australia has yet produced.

‘Memoir’ or ‘biography’, however, seem somehow insufficient descriptions of the book, given that it combines elements of travelogue, gonzo journalism, history and socio-political analysis as well as evocative accounts of Race’s experiences as a musician. Spanning thirty-one years and several continents, Road Series balances the introspective and personal with the expansive and global. Interview by Barnaby Smith.

How did the idea initially form for Road Series? A couple of pieces appeared in Overland, so did the book grow entirely out of those or have you had such a project on your mind for a while?

I’ve been writing for a long time, but my main focus was always on music. Then my first trip to West Africa inspired me to write about what I saw and felt there, and I showed this to a few people and the reaction was very positive – so that led to being published in Overland.

Then there was a strong reaction to that published story, the editors asked me for another, and so it grew.

At some point I changed my approach to include myself as a character within the story, rather than just writing strict reportage, and that was when Road Series really took form. This was a project that I hadn’t anticipated – and the further I went into it, the more it asked of me on a personal level; this was a struggle for me to deal with as I’ve always been very private, and in songwriting you can shield yourself with metaphors. But writing Road Series was quite a trip in itself, it forced me to address my own history, sometimes in a pretty confronting way.

Is it fair to say your intention was to subvert the stereotypical rock biography, with its emphasis on the confessional, partiality to clichés and ‘wild tales’?

Yes, I think that’s true. And I felt that I had real freedom to do that, because most memoirs follow a trajectory towards success and tend to gloss over the uncomfortable details. But what I had was not a typical show business tale to tell, so the focus lies elsewhere: in history, politics and philosophy and how these forces intersect in real life and fundamentally affect us and the music – how we hear it, how we make it, and why.

Can you identify any literary forebears for this kind of memoir?

James Hogg’s Confessions of a Self-Justified Sinner is extraordinary; it’s not a memoir exactly, but reads with a high impact realism, an eighteenth century plunge into

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>> INTERVIEW

the darkness of the human soul. I also recall a Russian diary of cocaine addiction from the 1920s that had a big impact, but the title and author I’m not clear on. Malcolm X, Miles Davis and Art Pepper all wrote astonishing and candid memoirs. Then there are writers like Hubert Selby Jr., Louis-Ferdinand Céline and many more who use the raw material of their private selves to analyse what it means to be alive and conscious in a world of dualities, with a merciless awareness of the failings of others and of themselves too.

What have been your own literary experiments over the years? It is true you have a draft or two of a novel?

My earliest attempts were along supernatural and futurist lines, but ultimately I lost interest because the process of writing is so hard and alienating and I found it easier and more expressive to pursue these ideas through music. Later, I wrote half a book based, in a very surreal way, on the life of Jerry Lee Lewis; then I spent several years developing a screenplay about the UFO cults. But it was only through doing all this that I realised that I actually needed to write about reality as I understood it, not as I reinvented it; it can take a long time to realise what it is that you really want to do.

To what degree is the book a kind of marking of a lost time, in that once upon a time somewhere like Timbuktu would be impossibly exotic, but globalisation and technology mean the notion of true intrepidity is somewhat lost?

I did have a sense with the chapters from the 1980s of conjuring up a vanished past, and found myself drawing in people, some of whom are no longer alive, and in a way making them live again. As memories came back, it became clear how vastly things have changed. Road Series follows some fault lines and tectonic shifts in global consciousness – that’s the background the narrative is set against, and this was also my feeling at the time of the events described. But rendering this became possible only with hindsight.

I don’t think that technology has necessarily brought things closer together and made them easier or more understandable; in the case of Timbuktu, that place is as impenetrable as it ever was. It appears closer and more intelligible through the long distance lens of the internet, but that’s partly digital illusion – I find the world more enigmatic and mysterious the longer I travel and examine it.

How tricky is it to juggle writing alongside music and other projects, did you ever have trouble with time and energy to devote to writing?

I wrote Road Series, each chapter, in a burst of energy after waiting for ideas to surface through my notes. So it was quite a disjointed process, which suited me as I could turn away, immerse myself in the studio or go out on the road then return to the writing later. The editing process to create the final book was an intensive three months, and I cleared everything else away to focus on that.

You said in a Kill Your Darlings interview that ‘There’s something not entirely ethical about a memoir’. Could you possibly elaborate on that? Is that a reference to the author having the luxury of documenting their highly subjective experience of something, while the narrative might be different for another participant, who is just as crucial to that particular episode, but doesn’t have the literary outlet for it?

Yes, that’s what I mean. I feel that a memoir aspires to describe the life experience of an author, but that experience is only really possible to describe in archetypal terms because perception itself is so splintered by the amount of information we process and the emotional states we attribute to events. There is no total consensus reality even between two human beings; we all have different versions of even very simple events. In Road Series, I only sketched outlines of the real people involved, partly out of respect for their privacy, and also because the memoir is really a kind of subjective truth, it can’t be anything else. We have our own stories, our truths, that for us are as sure as anything can be in this world.

Finally, as someone who is on tour a great deal, how much does reading play a part in life on the road, and what books have meant the most to you that you have read whilst travelling?

Reading on tour is a means to disengage with the daily grind of travelling by accessing a quiet, interior mental space; the time you need to do this, though, can be extremely difficult to find. Recently I read Kapuscinski’s Travels With Herodotus, which I loved; then I found myself on tour in France reading Houellebecq’s Submission, and the book made an awful lot of sense in that context. Perhaps the ultimate tour reading for me, at least in Europe, was Norman Davies’ Europe.

I also read a lot of investigative journalism like Vulture’s Picnic, or, also recently, a massive tome on the global weapons industry – reading this kind of in-depth analysis of corporate global destruction is particularly acute when you’re out in it, driving through vast industrial zones, or wondering at the fetish of airport luxury goods in an African airport. On tour about fifteen years ago I read the Old Testament through for the first time – I’d run out of other books in English, and found this bible in some suicidal hotel room. So I read it, and even though it didn’t convert me, it left me feeling profoundly amazed and slightly despondent at the same time!

Hugo Race will appear at the sessions Stories From the Road (39), The Lure of Elsewhere (57) and Words and Music (104) at Byron Writers Festival 2016, August 5-7.

To what degree has an upbringing in Australia – and Australian authors – informed your own literary style?

I really don’t know; certainly I’m aware how writers like Patrick White and Tim Winton, to name just two, reinvented their language to adapt to our peculiarly Australian landscape. But essentially I was educated in a Western European humanist tradition that didn’t really seek to integrate with Australian reality, and rather sought to transcend it with universal values – a project doomed to fail which brought us to where we are now, politically and socially. northerly | 015

>> SCU

A showcase of SCU student work, compiled by Dr. Lynda Hawryluk

The Bins Meghan Hunter

Some smart guy, in a bug jar not too far from here − in a bid to save some cash, made a call to not take our bins each week.

Our bins live in the sun. We can’t keep the heat off them due to a lack of space.

We now have mice in our roof. They shit in our sink. They eat food not kept in the fridge. They know how to eat the bait and not set the traps off.

The bins reek as the scraps sit, slow cook and rot in the heat.

A concoction of festering food scraps invades the air.

A chemical impression of Fijian Night Orchard fails to mask the offending particles, instead, merely contributing to the olfactory cocktail now permeating the lungs of the house’s inhabitants.

A fantasia of flies performs an accenting ballet; a less-than-subtle crescendo to the robust scent that was the height of Summer.

We have a yard of black house ants. We have a house of ants. We have a bin of ants.

The ants now live in the bricks in the walls. They nest in the wood on the deck.

We now have stray cats. The cats eat from our bins, which flow over each week.

They cry and fight. They call and mate. They shit and shed and puke.

They piss on our cars and leave claw lines in the paint.

Our bins stink. We have plagues of pests.

But costs were cut.

Meghan Hunter is a Bachelor of Arts student at Southern Cross University, majoring in Writing. During 2014-2015 she was on the committee for the university’s writers organisation run directly by students (WORDS). Prior to studying, she was an insurance agent. She has a dog and three fish.

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Clocking on & heading east

>> ARTS

Arts round-up...

Il Ritorno by CIRCA at Lismore City Hall

Il Ritorno is a groundbreaking new work that fuses CIRCA’s world-renowned stripped-back acrobatics with baroque opera. The stage is awash with bodies tumbling, lifting and clutching, until out of the darkness Greek hero Ulysses emerges after twenty years of war and wanderings.

The question is: will he reach his faithful wife Penelope before she succumbs to the charms of her various suitors? At the core of Il Ritorno is the hunger to return home – saturated with loss and war, powered by longing and haunted by the past.

Created by circus visionary Yaron Lifschitz in collaboration with composer and arranger Quincy Grant, Il Ritorno is performed by a cast of singers and accompanists who join the famed members of Brisbane’s own Circa Ensemble for this NORPA production.

Il Ritorno runs August 31 – September 2 at Lismore City Hall.

Tickets are $22 - $50 and can be purchased at www.NORPA.org.au

Kate Hallen at Lismore Regional Gallery

Kate Hallen’s exhibition Lay Down Your Swords, in the upstairs space at Lismore Regional Gallery, offers a visual interpretation of the feeling of panic, that is, when we become overwhelmed by a difficult situation. Hallen’s work is an expression of the spatial sensation of riding through panic, from the experience of having nowhere to go to relinquishing control and surrendering to ‘weightlessness’. Hallen, a local artist, captures the poignancy of this wrestle between human strength and vulnerability. There is an opening to Lay Down Your Swords with drinks and a talk by the artist on July 28 at 5:30pm.

Lay Down Your Swords runs July 20 – August 13 at Lismore Regional Gallery. www.lismoregallery.org

The elephant clock created by scholar and inventor Al-Jazari, which utilised a weightpowered water clock in the form of an Asian elephant.

Time Through the Ages An illustrated lecture by Kevin Karney, Monday July 11.

Mankind has always been absorbed with understanding time and has used the ‘tick-tock’ of nature to develop devices to tell us when things should happen. As civilisation has progressed, the social context of who needed to tell the time, whether civic leaders, the church, merchants, or individuals, has varied dramatically.

Equally, there has been a continuing drive towards greater accuracy. A further significant feature of timetelling has been our perception of the transience of our own lives. Philosophers and scientists have struggled with the concept of time, while poets have not.

Kevin Karney was brought up in Northumberland and educated at Rugby School and Trinity College Cambridge. He holds a Masters degree in Natural Sciences. After two years as a teacher in North Borneo, he worked in the oil business in the Middle East, Netherlands and the UK for thirty-three years. His lifelong interest in time-telling was fostered by his greatgrandfather and an uncle who were both gnomonists (those interested in sundials).

Constantinople and Istanbul: A Tale of Two Cities An illustrated lecture by Sue Rollin, Monday August 28.

Constantinople and Istanbul – two names for one city straddling Europe and Asia. As Constantinople, the city was the Byzantine capital for 1,000 years and then the capital city of the Ottoman Turks. Until the early twentieth century the city was referred to as Constantinople. However, as part of the Turkification movement, Turkey urged other countries to use Turkish names for their cities and so in time the city came to be known as Istanbul. Minarets and the domes of Turkish mosques dominate its skyline, while the waters of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn lap its shores. Colourful mosaics, beautiful tilework, elegant fountains, palaces and covered markets make Istanbul one of the more fascinating cities of the world.

Sue Rollin works as a tour guide in the Middle East and India. She has been a tutor and lecturer in Assyriology and Ancient History at the Universities of London and Cambridge and has also worked as an archaeologist. She is the author of travel guides on Istanbul and Jordan.

Both ADFAS lectures will take place at The A&I Hall, Bangalow.

Members and guests are invited to drinks at 6pm prior to the lecture at 6:30pm, followed by a light supper afterwards. Guests are welcome at $25 per person. For general enquiries contact Anni Abbink on 02 6684 3249 or anne.abbink@yahoo.com.au, or Denise Willis on 02 6687 1724 or denisewillis50@gmail.com

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>> EVENTS

NORPA’s big ideas

One of the Northern Rivers’ most vibrant cultural institutions, NORPA, has recruited former Byron Writers Festival director Jeni Caffin to curate its new suite of events, NORPA Ideas.

Here, Jeni reflects on her inspiration for the Ideas program and what we can expect when the initiative kicks off in 2017.

As I write these words, drinking my morning coffee, I’m also drinking in one of the most tranquil, verdant and soul-nourishing vistas imaginable. I’m back in my second home, Ubud, in Bali and I’m having a very big think.

It’s almost three years since I vacated the director’s chair at Byron Writers Festival and yesterday I was asked what I have been doing since. Well, I’ve been to the US a couple of times, to Cuba, to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. I travelled to Turkey, hopped and skipped around the Greek Islands, made extensive visits to the UK, explored Belgium, renewed my love affair with the Netherlands and darted about Hong Kong. And back to Bali. New Zealand was a stopping off point on the way to San Francisco, which was the springboard for a mountainous drive through British Columbia and Alberta to the high plains of Montana and Idaho. And back to Bali. This year I made it to the Jaipur Literary Festival in Rajasthan and embarked on a bone-jarring drive around that state. Spain and Portugal required attention, as did my third home, London’s British Museum. And of course, back to Bali.

I also had the privilege of participating in an extended process of self-inquiry and reflection under the guidance of my beloved Ashtanga teacher, in company with students with greater capacity than I. Alas, I confirmed what I had already suspected. I am a spiritual bogan.

Why am I telling you this? Because although I have the spiritual depths of an umbrella, a small plastic slightly broken umbrella, I do have an enormous thirst for conversation, for exchange of ideas, for exposure to knowledge and beliefs that might change my way of being.

Through all the wandering about the world, through all the standing and staring in wonder, through all the hilarity and tedium, there was a constant: engagement with people of different place and circumstance.

I simply love talking to people, which is why creating programs for literary festivals in Byron and Bali was the best possible job for me. One thought, one image, one overheard comment, triggers an entire conversation in my head and takes me into realms hitherto unexplored.

The beauty of creating a program is that one can then set about finding people to have that conversation out 018 | northerly

loud and then you and I can immerse ourselves in worlds beyond our experience. Of course, I do feel a nervous frisson when a program is released in case the ideas that so compelled and drove me in my imaginary world fail to engage an interested audience in the real world. But still I keep endeavouring to turn my tremulous ‘what if?’ into an emphatic ‘what is’.

And happily, I have been given a whole new opportunity to bring ideas, big and small, global and local, to a public forum. The wonderful NORPA, whose work as a creator and presenter of original and innovative performance I have long respected, is embarking on a new project, NORPA Ideas, and I am to curate it. Yaaay! The venue will be NORPA’s home, the beautifully renovated Lismore City Hall and I am delighted to have a fresh playground.

I wonder if you feel the way I feel, that we are bombarded with avalanches of opinion, gossip, rumour and innuendo, and yet somehow are sure of very little.

Oceans of rhetoric wash over us but when the waves recede, nothing of substance remains. I look to festivals, to Ted Talks, to Dangerous Ideas, to Big Ideas, to dig below the surface, to sweep aside the chatter and go beyond, find the substance.

The program proper gets underway in 2017, but I’ll be popping a few teasers into NORPA’s schedule before the end of the year and they will be announced at www.norpa.org.au And can I leave you with this? Yesterday evening, on my early evening walk along Tjampuhan Ridge into Ubud, I encountered a Balinese man and his wife and toddler sitting by the path, contemplating the emerald paddies. ‘Hello,’ he smiled. ‘Sit’. I was desperate to scamper to Ubud and drown in a margarita but how could I not? I sat, and for fifteen minutes we gazed and my world shifted a little. It was one of the best conversations I’ve ever had.

Jeni Caffin will appear at the sessions The World of Animals (5), Short Form: Novellas and Short Stories (35) and The Lure of Elsewhere (57) at Byron Writers Festival 2016, August 5-7.

Woman versus wilderness

>> REVIEW

Wild by Nature

By Sarah Marquis Review by Carly Lorente

The first question people normally ask National Geographic explorer Sarah Marquis is, why? Why would you spend three years walking around remote and inhospitable places, starving, freezing and alone?

By the time she began the hike that is the subject of her memoir Wild by Nature, she had over twenty expeditions under her belt, and was confident in her ability as a non-indigenous woman to live entirely off the land. She decides to ‘experiment’ on this trip, wanting to push her body even further, to see if she can measure the impact of her spirit on her body, and see just how far her performance will affect her mental state. Marquis covers an incredible distance, crossing six countries over three years, starting in Siberia and finishing next to a small tree with personal significance on the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia.

Relying on her own wits, she survives the mafia, drug dealers, thieves on horseback, temperatures from subzero to scorching, life-threatening wildlife, a dengue fever delirium in the Laos jungle, tropic ringworm in northern Thailand, dehydration, and a life-threatening abscess.

Most of these events she manages to ward off with nothing more than positive thoughts.

Marquis is candid, practical, and honest in the preparation for her journey; she did not just wake up and decide to walk from one side of the planet to the other. Marquis takes two years to prepare. She has an expedition leader and chief, topographic paper maps, and contacts in each of the countries she walks through, should the need to vacate arise, which actually happens quite often.

Being off the beaten track, she obviously gains access to some amazing experiences – traditional tea in a nomad’s yurt in Mongolia, spectacular scenery, sightings of rare birds barely glimpsed by humans, and sleeping beside animal carcasses – which obviously isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

The author, who really embodies the wild-woman archetype, devotes her books to women who are not as fortunate as herself and still fighting for freedom, or who do have it and don’t use it. On her journey, it is women

from each different culture who appear to help her when she needs it, reminding her of the universal woman tribe and that we must help each other not tear each other down. It is, in fact, this she searches for, their generosity feeding her heart.

The memoir suggests hope, and she is a humble traveller. She encapsulates an admirable positivity, proving that it is in fact possible to break free from mental limitations and simply follow your legs wherever they make take you. At the same time she doesn’t hide the difficulties.

Marquis’ relationship with herself mirrors that she holds with the earth, one of respect and curiosity. She extends this, also, to humanity. It seems as if in every difficult situation, there is a woman to care for her. She is able to look for similarities in our humanness.

Wild by Nature describes a courageous and extraordinary adventure, yet I found the voice a little too direct and the structure distracting, making it difficult to keep reading at times. I would have liked her to have fleshed out her inner journey more. If I’m honest, Marquis is a much more gifted speaker than writer, and is popular on the TED stage.

I was lucky to hear her speak at a Byron Writers Festival event where her warm, magnetic Swiss accent managed to crack everyone in the audience wide open with her tales. A natural raconteur, I don’t think her strength of spirit, or her humour, translates as well into the book.

As I lined up at the end of the talk for Marquis to sign my copy of her book, I wanted to know, which is more bearable – the unforgiving nature of the earth or that of humans?

“Balance,” she says, “too much of either is no good.”

Then, eyeing the growing queue behind me, her smile weary and on the backend of a worldwide book promotional tour she says, “I’ve been here too long, it’s time for me to return to the wild very soon. I need to return to walking.”

Allen & Unwin / 272pp / RRP $29.99 northerly | 019

Byron Writers Festival Workshops Laurel Cohn: Using Point of View to Reveal Character

Not only how we see the world, but what we see, depends on who we are. This workshop explores how description and narrative can reveal character and backstory in engaging ways.

When: Monday August 1, 10am – 4pm Where: Lone Goat Gallery, Cnr Lawson & Fletcher St (Byron Bay Library), Byron Bay Cost: $85 members or $100 non-members

Roz Hopkins: Sales and Marketing for Self-Published Authors Creating your self-published book is the easy part! This short course covers the hard part: how to promote, market, publicise and sell it. Suitable for authors of e-books, print and print-on-demand books.

When: Monday August 1, 1:30pm – 4:30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 2, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Roz Hopkins: The Self-publishing Map In this workshop, you will learn from a publishing expert how to put together a comprehensive and usable selfpublishing map for your book, whether it’s an e-book, print book or print-on-demand.

When: Tuesday August 2, 10am – 4pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 1, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $85 members or $100 non-members

Anthony Lawrence: The Art of Seeing Poet Anthony Lawrence’s workshop will change your ideas of how we see the world through a close reading of poetry, and given exercises that demand both critical and emotional attention.

When: Tuesday August 2, 1.30pm – 4.30pm Where: Lone Goat Gallery, Cnr Lawson & Fletcher St (Byron Bay Library), Byron Bay Cost: $50 Members or $60 non-members

Miles Merrill: Write to Speak Natasha Reddrop: Tools of the Trade Punctuation and sentence structure are crucial tools for writers, needed to achieve grammatical correctness enhancing expression and personal style. Discover common uses for all kinds of punctuation, and analyse some great examples.

When: Tuesday August 2, 9:30am – 12:30pm Where: Lone Goat Gallery, Cnr Lawson & Fletcher St (Byron Bay Library), Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Performance and speaking your words is essential to professional development and confidence. In this handson workshop Miles Merrill will show you how to use stories and poetry to get your message across.

When: Wednesday August 3, 9:30am – 12:30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 2, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Evelyn Conlon: After the Boots Go On Hilton Koppe: Finding Your Write Direction Hilton Koppe is an internationally acclaimed educator, coach and workshop facilitator. His fun short writing exercises will leave you feeling rejuvenated, refreshed and ready to put pen to paper.

When: Tuesday August 2, 10am – 4pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 2, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $85 members or $100 non-members

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Evelyn Conlon will help participants believe that writing is an adventure, best lived by creating one page at a time, as long as the writer knows what the next page should be.

When: Wednesday August 3, 10am – 4pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 1, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $85 members or $100 non-members

To sign up for Byron Writers Festival workshops visit www.byronwritersfestival.com

Faber Writing Academy: Getting Published Insiders reveal how to get your foot in the door, with Annette Barlow, Publisher at Allen & Unwin. This oneday course offers aspiring writers the opportunity to learn what really goes on inside a publishing house, how publishers make their choices and how to improve one’s chances of publication.

When: Wednesday August 3, 10am – 4pm Where: Lone Goat Gallery, Cnr Lawson & Fletcher St (Byron Bay Library), Byron Bay Cost: $100 members or $120 non-members

Lex Hirst: Editing Like a Pro: Tricks of the Trade Ever wondered what happens once you sign that book deal? Editing can be one of the most rewarding creative processes and Penguin Random House editor Lex Hirst will show you how.

When: Wednesday August 3, 1.30pm – 4.30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 2, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Louise Doughty & Kathryn Heyman: Writing Fiction For new and emerging writers ready to leap into fiction.

Whether you’re working on a novel or just beginning, this workshop will give you the inspiration and tools to keep going.

When: Thursday August 4, 9:30am – 12:30pm Where: Lone Goat Gallery, Cnr Lawson & Fletcher St (Byron Bay Library), Byron Bay Cost: $60 members or $70 non-members

David Roach: Screenwriting for the Novelist In this interactive masterclass, award-winning screenwriter, David Roach, will reveal the secrets of creating compelling ‘story worlds’, offering ideas for developing characters and exploring the structure of movies.

When: Thursday August 4, 10am – 4pm Where: Belongil Room, Elements, Byron Bay Cost: $100 members or $120 non-members

Liam Pieper: Writing Memoir – Everybody Has a Story Damon Young: Everyday Philosophy Join Damon Young for a hands-on philosophy workshop, with lively readings, discussion and writing exercises. Be introduced to thinkers including Hume, Nietzsche and Seneca, reflect on challenging essays and poetry.

When: Thursday August 4, 9:30am – 12:30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 1, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Anna Fienberg: Getting Started Writing for Children Explore ideas that most inspire you, and discover how to transform them into characters. Learn how developing those characters will grow your story and build a compelling structure.

When: Thursday August 4, 9:30am – 12:30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 2, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Find ‘The Story’ within your story, and build a narrative arc. You will learn to craft narrative from anecdote and make your story relatable by finding the universal in your individual experience.

When: Thursday August 4, 1.30pm – 4.30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 1, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-members

Claire Zorn: ‘Character CPR: bringing imaginary people to life’ Find ‘A story is only as strong as its characters - but how do authors create compelling characters that feel real to the reader? Claire Zorn gives insight to the process of building believable characters.

When: Thursday August 4, 1.30pm – 4.30pm Where: Byron Community College – Room 2, Jonson Street, Byron Bay Cost: $50 members or $60 non-member

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Competitions

EPIC! SHORT STORY COMPETITION The Footpath Library has announced the EPIC! Short Story Competition for primary and secondary students across Australia. The competition opens on the first day of the third school term in each state or territory, closing on September 30.

There are two age categories, primary and secondary, with students able to submit stories of up to 300 words, while more information can be found at https://www. footpathlibrary.org/competition/2016short-story-competition/

2016 WALTER STONE AWARD FOR LIFE WRITING This award defines ‘life writing’ as biography, autobiography, memoir, monograph and bibliography. Biography and autobiography may be extracts in order to meet word-count requirements of a minimum of 10,000 and a maximum of 25,000. The winner will be invited to an awards ceremony at the end of the year.

The award is organised by the Fellowship of Australian Writers and offers a first prize of $1,500 and publication in Writers Voice. Closing date for submissions is September 30. More details at http:// fawnsw.org.au/walter-stone-award-2016for-life-writing/

HEYWIRE COMPETITION The Heywire Competition is for Australian residents aged between sixteen and twenty-two who do not live in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth or Sydney. Submissions must be true stories of you and/or your community. Entries are not limited to text, with photo, audio and video categories also available. Text entries should be approximately 1,000 words, while there is no entry fee. The prize is the opportunity for your story to be produced by the ABC and an allexpenses paid trip to the Heywire Youth 022 | northerly

Issues Forum in Canberra. For more information visit http://www.abc.net.au/ heywire/competition/

ELYNE MITCHELL WRITING AWARDS The theme of this competition is ‘Australasian Rural experience: A New Perspective’ and is open to writers of both fiction and non-fiction. Entries should not be more than 2,500 in length, while there is an entry fee of $15.

First prize takes $1,000, while there is a special $500 prize for entrants local to Towang, Tumbarumba and Indigo Shires in Victoria. Closing date is July 27. http://www.elynemitchell.com.au/

MiNDFOOD SHORT STORY The MiNDFOOD Short Story Competition is open to Australian and New Zealand resident over the age of eighteen, with a word limit of 2,000. First prize is awarded for both Australians and New Zealanders and is a prepaid gift card worth $1,000. There is no fee for entries, and a deadline of July 30. More information at http:// www.mindfood.com/competition/ calling-all-writers-have-your-shortstory-published-in-mindfood/

BETTY OLLE POETRY AWARD The Betty Olle Poetry Award is awarded for traditional Australian bush poetry (with rhyme, rhythm and metre). There is an entry fee of $10 with a maximum of two poems. Entry is free for the junior section. The winner receives $500 with second prize taking $200; the winning junior poet wins $100. The closing date is August 15, with further details about the competition available at http://www.abpa.org.au/Files/ event_2016_TheBettyOllePoetryAwardEntryForm.pdf

CHILD WRITES COMPETITION The Child Writes Competition is open to Australian primary schoolaged children. The winning writer will be paired with an illustrator to be mentored through a program that will result in a published book through Boogie Books. Submissions should be stories of no more than 800 words, and there is a fee of $15 per entry. Deadline is September 11, for more details visit http://www.childwrites.com.au/ CHILDWRITES-Competition.html

PATRICK WHITE YOUNG INDIGENOUS WRITERS AWARD These awards have been designed to encourage Indigenous Australians from kindergarten to year 12, studying in NSW, to put their reading, writing and creative skills into action. There are three themes to write to: ‘Things are not always what they seem…’, ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Standing on one leg…’. There is also a group competition, in which Aboriginal students working together with classmates can develop a shared poem, story or play. The deadline for entries is September 23, with a major prize and two encouragement awards on offer for each school year. For more information visit http://www.aec.org.au/ wordpress/patrick-white-award/

MARGOT MANCHESTER MEMORIAL SHORT STORY AWARD Organised by The Society of Women Writers Tasmania, the Margot Manchester Memorial Short Story Award is open to all short story writers writing in English. Submissions should be between 1,200 and 1,500 words, and there is a $5 fee for entry. Deadline is August 31, with first place taking $200 and second place $50. Further information can be found at http:// swwtstylus.weebly.com/

UMOJA ORPHANAGE WRITING COMPETITION This international competition is seeking essays, short fiction or travel articles of no more than 1,000 words on the theme of ‘peace’. Entry costs a minimum donation of $10 with all proceeds going to the Umoja Orphanage in Kenya. The winner will receive a trophy, a certificate and will have their work posted online. Closing date for entries is August 26, and more information can be found at https:// umojawritingcomp.wordpress.com/ rules-entry-form/

2016 POETICA CHRISTI PRESS ANNUAL POETRY COMPETITION This year’s Poetica Christi Press competition has the theme ‘Hope whispers’. As well as a first prize of $300 and a second prize of $100, twenty-five poems will be included in an anthology to be published by Poetica Christi Press.

The competition’s theme is designed to lend itself to poems about hope, aspirations, faith, dreams, reverie, optimism, promise, perseverance, possibility, confidence, courage, expectation, potential, trust and more.

There is a $6 reading fee for each poem entered, and you can find out more at http://poeticachristi.org.au

23rd SCARLET STILETTO AWARDS A record $10,000 is available in prize money for this year’s Scarlett Stiletto Awards, Sisters in Crime Australia’s annual short story competition, now sponsored by Text Publishing. Stories must have a crime or mystery theme, a female protagonist and a female author.

First prize takes $1,500 as well as a trophy, a scarlet stiletto. Second prize is $1,000 and third prize $500. There is a range of further categories with cash prizes available. Stories should be no more than 5,000 words long, while there is an entry fee of $15 for

Sisters in Crime members and $20 for others. Deadline for entries is July 31, for more information visit http://www. sistersincrime.org.au

SCRIBES WRITERS’ ‘SHORT TAKES’ Organised by Scribes Writers, based at Belmont in Victoria, the ‘Short Takes’ competition is seeking prose submissions across two categories (Fictional Short Story and Memoir) with a maximum word-count of 1,000.

First prize is $200, with second place taking $100. There is a $7 entry fee for each story, while the deadline is September 30. For further information go to http://www.scribeswriters.com/ details-and-conditions.html

VERBOLATORY LAUGH-A-RIOT CONTEST The Verbolatory Laugh-A-Riot Contest is seeking entries that are ‘your best, most hilarious accounts of your experiences in the writing/publishing industry’. There are two categories, ‘Free’ and ‘Paid’; both ask for pieces of no more than 500 words, with cartoons also welcome. Prize money for winning the ‘Free’ category is $50, and $100 for winning the ‘Paid’ category, which has an entry fee of $5. Deadline for entries is August 31, for full specifications visit http://devyaniborade.blogspot.com. au/p/contest.html

THE STRINGYBARK TIMES PAST SHORT STORY AWARD 2016 The Stringybark Times Past Short Story Award is inviting short story submissions of 1,500 words or less, with the theme of Australian history. Each story must be based on a real-life event from Australia’s past. Total prize money comes to $950, with an entry of $12 per story. There is opportunity for feedback from judges, also, for an extra $15.

First prize takes $400 plus publication and a variety of books. For full details go to http://www.stringybarkstories. net/competition-info/the-stringybarktimes-past-award-2016.html

THE SOCIETY OF WOMEN WRITERS QLD COMPETITION Open to both member and nonmember aspiring women writers, the theme for this year’s Society of Women Writers Qld competition is ‘Home’.

There are three categories available: Poetry (up to 50 lines), Short Stories (up to 2,000 words) and Non-Fiction Articles (up to 2,000 words). The winner in each category receives $50 plus publication. Non-members must pay a $10 entry fee, and deadline for entries is July 31. For further information email theabiesheuvel@gmail.com

CHARLOTTE DUNCAN AWARD Celapene Press invites entries for the Charlotte Duncan Award for a short story for young readers aged 9-12 years.

Established in the memory of Charlotte Duncan to raise funds for the neo-natal unit at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, the competition offers $75 for first prize, while stories should not exceed 1,500 words. Deadline is August 31, and for full entry requirements visit http://www.celapenepress.com.au/

NATIONAL ONE-ACT PLAYWRITING COMPETITION Organised by the Noosa Arts Theatre, The Nimmo Prize for Best Play will receive $5,000, with second prize taking $2,000 and third place $1,000.

The three finalists will also see their works performed as part of the Noosa Arts Theatre One-Act Play Festival.

Entries close on October 1 entry is $40 per play. For full submission details visit http://www.noosaartstheatre.org. au/pages/playwriting-competition/ entry-form.html northerly | 023

>> WRITERS’ GROUPS

>> Alstonville Plateau Writers Group

>> Federal Writers’ Group

>> Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing

>> FAW Port Macquarie-Hastings Regional

>> Bangalow Writers Group

>> Gold Coast Writers Association

Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on 66285662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Jan on 0404007586 or janmulcahy@ bigpond.com Meets Thursdays at 9:15am at Bangalow Scout Hall.

Contact Simone on 0407749288

>> Bellingen Writers Group

Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2pm. All welcome, contact Joanne on 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@restnet.com.au

>> Byron Bay Fiction Writing Group

Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 0420282938 or diana.burstall@gmail.com

>> Casino Writers Group

Meets every third Thursday of the month at 4pm at Casino Library. Contact Brian on 0266282636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

>> Cloudcatchers

For Haiku enthusiasts. A ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement. Contact Quendryth on 66533256 or email quendrythyoung@ bigpond.com

>> Coffs Harbour Writers Group

Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Lorraine Penn on 66533256 or 0404163136, email: lmproject@bigpond.com. www. coffsharbourwriters.com

>> Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group

Share your memoir writing for critique. Monthly meetings, contact 0409824803 or email costalmermaid@ gmail.com

>> Cru3a River Poets

Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on 66458715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au

>> Dangerously Poetic Writing Circle

Meets first Saturday of each month at 1.30pm at Federal. Contact Susanna Freymark on 6688 4457 or susannafreymark@gmail.com Meets 1pm on last Saturday of each month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on 65843520 or email Bessie on befrank@tsn.cc Meets third Saturday of each month, 1:30pm for 2pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads. Contact 0431443385 or email info@goldcoast-writers.org.au

>> Kyogle Writers

Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on 66242636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

>> Memoir Writing Group

Meets each month at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 66855387 or 0420282938 or email diana. burstall@gmail.com

>> Middle Grade / Young Adult Fiction Writers’ Group

Meets monthly at 2pm on Sundays in Bangalow. Contact Carolyn Bishop at carolyncbishop@gmail.com or 0431161104

>> Nambucca Valley Writers Group

Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca. Contact 65689648 or nambuccawriters@ gmail.com

>> Taree-Manning River Scribblers

Meets second Wednesday of the month, 9am-11:30am, Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on 65532829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com

>> Tweed Poets and Writers

Meets weekly at the Coolangatta Senior Citizens Centre on Tuesdays from 1:30 to 3:30pm, NSW time.

Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers are all welcome. Phone Lorraine 0755248035 or Pauline 0755245062.

>> WordsFlow Writing

Meets second Wednesday of each month, 2pm-4pm at Brunswick Valley Community Centre. Contact Laura on 66801976 or visit www.dangerouslypoetic.com

Group meets Fridays during school term, 12:30pm-3pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412455707 or visit www.wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com

>> Dorrigo Writers Group

>> Writing for Wellbeing

Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm.

Contact Iris on 66575274 or email an_lomall@bigpond. com or contact Nell on 66574089

>> Dunoon Writers Group

Writers on the Block. Meets second Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Dunoon Sports Club.

Contact Helga on 66202994 (W), 0401405178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com 024 | northerly

Writing for Wellbeing workshops meet monthly on a Thursday from 10:30am to 1pm at Richmond Hill.

Focus is on expressive writing, support and feedback from facilitators Jan Mulcahy and Sally Archer. Phone 0404 007 586 or email janmulcahy@bigpond.com or visit the Facebook page

With an estimated 20,000 manuscripts submitted to publishers each year in Australia - and so few are published - it's a daunting task for writers with work of merit. That is why Sid Harta Publishers currently only consider manuscripts that have been professionally read by our own listed editors.

This is a mandatory step required by our publishing house and one which provides the necessary ‘filter’ to enable management determine which projects we would support.

Subject to the assessment, should our editors recommend a manuscript for publication SHP negotiates with the author to have the work polished by our team, liaising with the author until the work is considered ready for book design.

A small number of review copies are then produced to test the market and solicit reviews. Copies are sent to distributors and reviewers who

examine the work and offer an opinion as to the market viability of the title. Subject to that report and review response SHP would then offer the author one of a number of publishing options ranging from a traditional publishing royalty based arrangement to co-publishing or simply managing the printing and distribution of a limited print run on behalf of the author.

This is not vanity press. SHP will only publish works that have merit. To ensure the quality of our titles we have engaged highly-skilled, professional editors to prepare the final manuscript for publishing. SHP management is conscious of the need to maintain the highest level of integrity in the quality of works published, testament to this is the substantial list of authors whose high profiles are evident amongst the general community.

Amongst these, three titles with forewords by the current Governor General of Australia, His Excellency the Hon. Peter Cosgrove, the most recent past Governor General the Hon. Quentin Bryce, and the previous Governor General, the Hon. Michael Jeffery.

Call for Manuscripts

Looking for a publisher?

Have you written a novel, a biography, a family history, poetry, an instruction manual or a selection of short stories? The first step towards achieving your dream is to obtain an objective opinion of your work.

S i d H a rta p u b l i s h e s b o o k s o f s u b s ta n c e .

T

he Melbourne-based Sid Harta Team appreciates that it is a brave step to hand over one’s precious work to a stranger. Our editors bear this in mind with an assessment that is sensitive while critical, encouraging, and realistic.

What are our submission requirements?

• The manuscript must be your own personal and original work.

• Submission of your manuscript by email with a brief synopsis.

Sid Harta Publishers is offering writers the • A brief covering letter with details opportunity to receive specialised editorial about yourself relevant to your work. advice on their manuscripts with a view to • Assessment fees may be viewed at having their stories published. http://publisher-guidelines.com/fees.

You are invited to visit our websites for further supportive information: Sid Harta Publishers: sidharta.com.au Send us your manuscript: Submission details: publisher-guidelines.com

Sid Harta Publishers specialises in new and emerging authors, and offers a full range of publishing options.

We publish: • print editions & print-ondemand via Amazon • ebooks for all platforms.

Call us to discuss our service.

Contact SHP at: author@sidharta.com.au Phone: (03) 9560 9920 Fax: (03) 9545 1742 Web: http://sidharta.com.au SID HARTA PUBLISHERS Pty Ltd: Suite 99, No 66 Kingsway, Glen Waverley, Victoria 3150.